Tired Day, Happy Day

Greetings, all!  I must say, for a day in which I have only one class, I came home surprisingly tired!  However, something that my friend Drew said to me once about work at a summer camp stuck with me:  "If you don't come home tired at the end of the day, you could have given more."  I guess I'm trying hard enough!

I write to you this evening with some exciting news:  I (almost) officially have an internship at AISJ!  I took the light rail downtown this morning and set off for AISJ, map in hand.  Now, I never actually got lost, as I always knew where I was...it just took me a while to know where the school was.  Fortunately, when I spoke to the principal, I had warned her that I was new to the city, and she sai not to worry if I was running late!  When I arrived, we talked for a few minutes, then she showed me around the school.  I was introduced to the instructors and a few of the students in the kindergarten-aged class she wants me to work with.  Pending a letter from MHC's teacher licensure coordinator explaining that I am who I say I am and I'm studying what I say I'm studying (when working with kids, you've got to have your bases covered), I will be joining them on Friday mornings.  Hooray!!!

I took the bus back to the university (and chatted to an Israeli HU student in Hebrew while we waited -- cool!) and grabbed a cup of coffee before going to order course readers for my remaining class.  In the process, I ran into my friends Rachel and Ellen, and Rachel and I met someone else in our Holocaust class, Yael.  I'll be doing a lot of reading between classes tomorrow, as the readers won't be printed until 10AM!  But fortunately I have some reading from a textbook and some from the Bible, so I can get a fair amount done for tomorrow without them.  Following this, I grabbed a quick lunch, then settled in to get some more reading done before a lovely Skype date with Miri-Bea <3 This was unfortunately cut a bit short when I had a coughing attack!

After getting some water to end said coughing attack, I headed off to my Islam class, where we covered some more history of pre-Islamic Arabia.  As boring as I find all the history, I do recognize its importance in providing context for everything we'll cover later in the course.  And Nafez spices up his lectures with funny personal stories and interesting details about his life as an Arab -- what a fascinating life he's had!  Arielle and I walked back to the Kfar together, then I grabbed a few things from the market, ate dinner, and am finishing up reading for tomorrow's classes.  Tomorrow I have my first extra 90 minutes of intensive Hebrew, which will determine for me whether I stick with the class -- so far I haven't been impressed, but hopefully this extra session will be what I hope and expect it will be.  Otherwise, yay for extra free time?  Wish me luck!

In other news, congratulations to my dear cousins Gabe and Daniela who just welcomed their second child, Serina Eve!  It's crazy knowing that cousins in my generation are becoming parents...I am so happy for them =)